


Cleaning Up

by embolalia



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: AU from the middle of 5/1, Canon drug use, F/M, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27717544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: Maybe things would have gone differently if she hadn’t started out the night wanting him. But she did.What if all that pot got Will to act instead of speak? Mac in the aftermath, set during the early hours of May 2nd, 2011.
Relationships: Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21





	Cleaning Up

Mac looks through the floor to ceiling window and sighs. The balcony is littered with cups and bottles. At least Will’s ashtray has been left mostly lonely. Smoking in newsrooms is on the way out.

She hisses at the cold as she steps outside, then starts dumping half-full cups together and stacking the empties. In the end she has to cross the living room with nearly-overflowing cups of beer mixed with punch, and thank God she makes it. Though the rug could use a cleaning after the party, anyway.

Mac glances toward the bedroom as she turns on the faucet to wash the whole mess down the sink. There are no signs of stirring. That’s a relief, too.

Maybe things would have gone differently if she hadn’t started out the night wanting him. But she did. It took her an hour last night to decide what work-appropriate-but-still-appealing outfit to wear—all the while walking around her room in the gifts Will got her for their other first anniversary without even acknowledging the choice. Will has always liked marking anniversaries. For their first year as a couple, he rented them a mountain cabin, and played to her on his guitar, and built the fire so high she barely had to get dressed except in the lingerie he gave her, all ivory lace.

A few weeks ago, Charlie pointed out that a year had passed since he called her up about a job, and all she could remember was the sudden thrill that went through her when Charlie suggested that Will still cared what she thought. He’d ignored her for so long that hope was almost too sweet a gift. After she left Charlie’s office, she started planning. The look on Will’s face when she roped him into hosting was a riot of irritation and overwhelm, but in an instant he sweetened. Neither of them had to say that it was their anniversary, too.

So she got dressed last night to mark one year and one week of being together professionally, physically near him, talking to him almost every day. He’s always liked anniversaries. It was the beginning of May and she’d been waiting for him to kiss her since Valentine’s Day. She put on the lingerie. It didn’t seem too fanciful to hope.

Mac goes back to the balcony for bottles next, collecting their necks between her fingers so they splay outward, so they don’t clink. Above the buildings in the distance the sky is brightening toward dawn.

She was the first guest to show up to the party, but she was the co-host after all. The door was propped open, so she let herself in, surveying the caterers who were setting out platters of appetizers and stocking the bar.

“Oh!” Will said from across the living room, and she turned with a teasing smile that faltered when she saw him in dark slacks and a blue shirt he hadn’t buttoned yet, his hair wet from the shower.

“Hi,” Mac said, turning away before she could stare. “Do you think that’s straight?”

She heard the whisper of his fingers, hasty on the buttons, as he stood behind her to gauge the banner that was part of the set-up for the night. “Straight enough,” he muttered.

“Happy anniversary,” Mac said, still studying it.

Will’s palm at the small of her back was enough of an answer, even if what he said was, “They’d better not have damaged the wall.”

The party turned out to be genuinely fun. It had been a long time since she’d heard either Will or Jim play music, and never together. A cluster of younger producers staked out a table for drinking games and were delighted that Mac knew how to play quarters. After two hours she was half-drunk and practically giddy.

When they got the message from the White House about the president’s imminent speech, Mac allowed herself only the slightest flicker of disappointment—what if she’d also been the last to leave?—before getting to work.

The drinking game seems to have left the biggest mess of the evening, a side effect of people playing flip cup with cups that still held dregs of beer. At least they were playing over tile? Mac wipes down the table and then the floor. A glance at the clock tells her it’s five in the morning. If she were anyone else, she’d be sleeping right now. Certainly not channeling her nervous energy into this. The easiest explanation would be to say that this is a holdover from last night’s nervous energy. She was sure from the moment the suggestion was made that the news was good news. Bin Laden. A milestone, a victory. Vindication for so many lost marines. Just like this, she couldn’t stop moving.

“Thank God! Where have you been?” Mac demanded when Will finally arrived at the office.

He was already mostly dressed to go on air when she found him, a striped tie loose around his neck. Will blinked at her, then down at the blue and silver fabric. “Could you help me with this?” he asked.

She frowned, waiting for it to be a joke, but when he looked at her expectantly, Mac stepped forward. The smell of his cologne was cut with whiskey and cigarettes and a hint of sweat. They were a couple for two years, so she’d tied his tie for him before, but always in intimate, tender moments. Standing so close to him felt like crossing a line. As close as dancing. She tugged and aligned the fabric, feeling his breath on her forehead.

“Mackenzie,” Will said softly as she patted the tie into place on his chest. She let her palm linger.

He cupped her cheek in his palm and before she could react, his mouth covered hers.

Mac leaned into the kiss. God, could the man kiss. Every other emotion was subsumed for a moment in relief. Then joy arrived. She’d had a few drinks and a huge dose of adrenaline, and she’d been missing him for four years. She could have laughed but she didn’t want to stop kissing him.

When they finally parted for air, Will whispered, “Wow, Mackenzie.”

The wonder in his tone was odd enough that she leaned back. He was grinning at her. “Will, what’s going on?” she asked.

He grabbed her hand and tugged her into the bathroom. She matched his grip, glancing through his office door to make sure they hadn’t already drawn the wrong attention.

The bathroom door closed behind them. “I’m just—I’m just really stoned,” Will admitted, laughing.

Stoned. Mac closed her eyes and turned her face away. She bit her lip, already swollen from kissing. “Is that all this is?” she made herself ask.

Will reached for her, clasping the back of her head in his palm so she had to look at him and then kissing her again, his tongue in her mouth, his other hand finding her hip. She knew she should probably push him away, but if he was going to change his mind when he sobered up, shouldn’t she get all the kisses she could? Mac pressed up on her toes, an arm around his neck, and he caught her between his body and the bathroom door. He smelled like her man. They were so good at this. She wanted him to tear her clothes off. She just had to stop thinking.

“Wait. Stop,” Mac said while she still could.

“Mackenzie,” he protested.

“We have to work. We have to—” She gasped as he nipped at her earlobe. “The show—And I can’t take advantage of you like this.”

At that Will retreated a few inches. “Mac, I promise you’re not—”

She pushed him back until his hands dropped away from her. “If you were in your right mind—”

“Just because I have inhibitions doesn’t mean I don’t always want you.”

“How many _don’ts_ were in that sentence?” she retorted, trying not to let its meaning reach her. Not right then. She’d never realized how small his bathroom was. In the mirror her cheeks were flushed scarlet. She looked wanton and he looked hungry.

Then Will downshifted into confused. “What?”

Mac folded her arms to keep from touching him. “Will. Billy. You may be stoned, but I’m not. If we did this and tomorrow you decided—just—we can deal with this after the show. Fuck, Will, the show! Bin Laden! We have to get out of here.”

He reached around her hip to open the door, and she strode out, not stopping until a dozen feet separated them. When she looked back, God help her, he was still smiling.

That line lingers with Mac now as she hesitantly lifts the foil covers off food that someone hastily crammed into the refrigerator last night. Had it already sat out too long? Will anyone ever want to eat this guacamole with lost chips protruding in spikes? 

_Just because I have inhibitions doesn’t mean I don’t always want you._

It’s the kind of line that his usual inhibitions would have prevented, but if it was the truth, then. Then maybe. Maybe she really didn’t abuse the moment by kissing him again. A shiver goes through her. Maybe every time she stands in his office, vibrating in a particular register that isn’t anger, isn’t impatience, maybe those times he wants her, too.

They made it through the show. Despite his state, she wasn’t surprised. He’d been waiting nearly a decade to give this monologue, and after the President’s speech ended it was so late that they did little more than recap before sending the audience to bed. And every ten minutes or so, all night, she remembered how he’d kissed her and found herself blushing down at some console, sure the staff could tell.

As soon as they were off the air, Will looked up at the camera and she watched on her monitor as he pulled his tie free of its knot.

Mac swallowed hard. “My office,” she murmured into her mic, into his ear. She stalked out of the control room as fast as she could.

“Hey,” he said, entering her office on her heels.

She faced him, smiling because it had already been a great night, flinching because she had no idea what was about to happen. “Are you still high?” she asked.

Will’s hands wavered through the air. “I’m not quite as high but I’m still very high,” he said, as if it were a science he was inventing on the spot. “So as I see it, we have two options. We could wait and talk in the morning, or you could come home with me, have a cookie, and see what happens.”

Usually she tried not to fantasize about Will too much, but he’d stepped into her personal space, and as she stared up at him she had no doubt they were both imagining themselves in his bed.

“Look.” The word was a whisper, so she cleared her throat. A whole speech had been running through her mind during the show, about how she wanted him, and he had to know it, but she couldn’t bear for him to regret her in the morning. Instead she said, “Why don’t we go clean your apartment.”

He smacked his palm against his forehead. “The party!”

She laughed.

Clean-up was at least enough of a story for Lonnie, though Mac doesn’t think he was fooled for a second. In the car Will sat in the back with her, and took her hand, holding the backs of her fingers to his chest. She could remember a time when the gesture was a daily intimacy. She closed her eyes and counted his heartbeats.

Mac finishes loading the dishwasher and gathers the flower arrangements together on Will’s dining table. Some of them should go into the office; he certainly won’t appreciate them. The sign she leaves up because it’s too high to take down on her own. Odds are good it’ll stay there for months, unless it bothers whoever Will hires to clean.

She shakes her head at the thought. Of course he doesn’t do his own vacuuming. If she’d stopped to think there was no real reason for her to come back with him for cleaning’s sake, or to be straightening up now. Was he just that high or did he know the whole time that it was an excuse?

The truth is, they barely cleaned anything.

They stepped through the door and Mac shook her head at the chaos they’d left behind in their flight to get to the studio.

“Hungry?” Will asked.

They’d only had appetizers for dinner, and then a wild night. It was already past one in the morning. “Yeah,” Mac said.

It was something else to focus on: she microwaved a platter of mozzarella sticks and spanakopita and unidentifiable fried foods. When she got to the table, Will was pouring out two tumblers of whiskey.

Mac slid the food to him, and as they started to eat she lifted one glass and poured it into the other. “Just catching up,” she said to his appalled expression, and swallowed down the liquor while he watched her. Every part of her was flushed.

Maybe things would have gone differently if she hadn’t started out the night wanting him. But she did.

As soon as she stood and gestured to the disarray of cups and bottles and plates, Will rose too. She’d left her heels under the table and she felt short looking up at him.

“The mess isn’t going anywhere,” Will said. He smiled, wider than she’d seen in a year. “You were incredible tonight. We got Obama!”

Mac wrapped her arms around his waist and he held her with all his strength, like that perfect moment on Valentine’s Day. She was tired and happy. She’d longed for him on three continents. She leaned her head back and then they were kissing again.

They got half naked on the spot, fumbling with buttons and seams. Will flung her shirt somewhere past the table, and they got a few more kisses in before he stopped and stared down at her, head cocked.

Mac unzipped her pants and kicked them away, stood there in nothing but the lingerie.

A smile flirted across his lips. A glint in his eye stood in for him saying, _You wanted this._

She tilted her chin up as if to ask, _What are you going to do about it?_

They’d waited years for this, and also all night.

What surprised her most was how it felt like a reunion. They’d done this hundreds of times, and all those heated memories, long-denied, pressed in on them. He carried her to the bedroom and she already knew the strength of his arms. He remembered exactly where and how to touch her. This was what their bodies had been made for. She arched her back and tugged at his hair and they were both lost.

Afterward, she dragged herself up to use the bathroom before she could fall asleep.

“Don’t go!” Will said, catching her hand.

Mac leaned down and kissed his eyebrow. “I’ll be right back.”

He took his own turn washing up after her, then curled into the bed again, spooning behind her. She was falling asleep and she was already having the best dream. Will’s lips brushed her shoulder, and she heard him whisper, “I’ve never stopped loving you.”

Mac tried not to stiffen or to betray in any way that she was still awake. Thirty seconds passed and he seemed to be sleeping. As she relaxed, regret washed through her. She could have rolled over and said she loved him too. Why hadn’t she? He was offering her everything she’d wanted for years, and what if he took it away as soon as he sobered up? What if her own profession of love could have changed that? Oh God, what if he held this against her? What if he was ashamed that they’d done this and disgusted with her? What if he just withdrew everything he said while stoned, left her alone again?

Her thoughts raced in circles for an hour before she eased out of Will’s arms, out of his bed. He’d sounded so desperate when he asked her not to go. If she left and he really had wanted her to stay, she could wreck things all over again. She gathered up her clothes from across the living room. At least she could clean.

Now it’s past six. It’s Monday morning. They’ll have to go to work in a couple hours. Mac sets up Will’s coffee maker, a reassuringly standard gadget.

She’s going to have to sit across from him at the rundown, and shouldn’t she have been thinking about this last night?

He always wants her. He’s never stopped loving her. She’s never going to stop loving him. And yet she can’t quite imagine them walking into work together.

While the coffee percolates, Mac leans on the kitchen island, then rests her head on her arms. For her crimes, this is all she gets: he’ll wake up and punish her for still being here. But there’s just a chance that he won’t. There’s one way forward out of a hundred where he wakes up and hesitates before regretting it, where she says she loves him and they live happily ever after. One in a thousand, maybe. One in a million. Last time she blew up all her chances, didn’t stay to try out a single one.

She’s done all she could think of to do. Except for the bags of recycling and trash that have to be taken wherever they go, the apartment is clean. Well, it could use a thorough vacuuming. Mac feels suddenly foolish for having made this specific grand gesture while he slept, but she didn’t leave.

She jumps when the coffee maker beeps and runs to shut it off. Most of the mugs are in the dishwasher, but two are at the back of a shelf where Mac can almost reach them. She snags one on the first try, and hooks a finger through the handle of the other—except then it flings itself from her grip and crashes down, shattering on the tile floor.

“Mac?”

Standing in the middle of far too much broken glass, she looks up to find Will stumbling out of the bedroom in his boxers. “Jesus, man!” she cries out, startled again.

He looks around wildly, then back at her. “Mackenzie?”

“I broke a cup,” she says. The simplest answer. She curls her shoulders close, as if she’s cringing away from the shards of mug on the floor. There’s a version of this where he’s cold and hostile, tells her he never would have touched her sober. She tries to shake the mental image away. He was so sweet last night. It has to be real.

“Come here.” He holds out a hand, helps her step over the ring of glass. They back away from it together.

“I can sweep,” Mac offers feebly.

He frowns as he takes the two steps into the living room. “You cleaned?”

She shrugs, wishing she’d gotten some coffee before he woke up. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Will glances back at her, in her wrinkled clothes from the party. “You could have borrowed a t-shirt,” he says gently.

“If you threw me out I wanted to be dressed,” Mac says lightly, halfway to a joke. So she’s surprised when Will looks stricken. “Hey,” she adds, reaching out as he sinks onto the couch. “I only meant—” Except she did mean it. She’s felt the scene settling back around her all night: his old apartment, this same rug, Will screaming at her to leave while she tried to find her shoes. Right now her shoes are under the dining table.

But when Will lifts his head from his hands, he’s thinking of something else. “My mother said that to me once,” he says.

“Oh, Will.” She drops to kneel in front of him.

“She kept some old clothes hidden in the barn, and a blanket, in case—” He’s been staring into space, and as she clasps his knees he meets her eyes. “You can’t trust me?”

Mac takes a breath. “I know you’d never hit me, Will.”

He bows his head. “I’ve hurt you, though.”

She won’t deny it. “We’ve hurt each other.” She pulls his hands away from his face and laces their fingers together. Fear throbs through her. “I never stopped loving you, either.” Will is silent for a long time, and Mac tries to tell what she’s seeing in his face. Usually she can read what’s beyond his stoicism. In her exhaustion he’s a blank. “Do you want me to leave?” she finally asks.

“I’ve never wanted to forgive him,” Will says. His grip on her hands tightens. “He was—is—he hurt us for—I don’t know, the power or something. So you tell yourself that people can’t change and it’s better to walk away than to stick around hoping for something impossible. People don’t change, so if they hurt you there’s no coming back from it. And anyway I never wanted to forgive him.”

As Mac watches, his face relaxes and she can see the tremble in his jaw, the darting of his gaze. His fingers twitch in hers. “I think I’ve wanted to forgive you all along, and I had no idea what to do with that.” He shakes his head. “You love me?”

She presses a kiss to the back of his hand. “I love you, Billy.” Mac leans up, hoping he’ll kiss her, only to have her smile wrenched apart by a yawn.

Will laughs when she wrinkles her face in apology. “Maybe we should go back to bed, leave this mess to clean up later.”

“That’s your line of the night, huh?”

“It’s morning now.”

Will stands and tugs her to her feet, taking their moment of closeness to pull her into his arms. He kisses her once, and again. “I love you, too.”

Mac nods sleepily. “Is that t-shirt still on offer?”

Will guides her toward the bedroom with arm around her shoulders. “Like I could stop you.”


End file.
